The invention refers to a splint for reducing and maintaining motionless fractures of fingers and the metacarpus. The term "finger" as used herein includes the terminating members of a hand, including the thumb.
Such splints have long been used in accident surgery. The splints must be adapted to the fractured finger and the fractured metacarpus, respectively, and must maintain the adapted shape for unobjectionably supporting the fracture. Such adapting of splints is, however, difficult because the fingers extend in mutually parallel relation only in stretched position, whereas in bent position of the fingers the now curved axes of the fingers are, starting from a transversely extending hand vault, no longer parallelly arranged as in stretched position but are directed all to one single point approximately located at the scaphoid bone hump or at the area of the thumb ball. The axes of the fingers are thus gradually changing their position during a bending movement, starting from a parallel position corresponding to the stretched position of the fingers, until the axes of the fingers are essentially intersecting in one point with completely bent fingers. Fingers showing a fracture can, however, not be maintained motionless while being in stretched position. Instead, the fingers must maintained motionless while in an intermediate bent position of the fingers so that the sinews are stretched and the fingers will not become stiffened. As a consequence, the splint must be brought to a position corresponding to the intermediate bent position of the finger to be supported and the splint must maintain this position during the total healing process. This is not possible with known splints. Such splints can either not be bent into the position for correctly supporting the fractured finger in its intermediate bent position in an optimum manner or can not maintain the shape adapted to the finger as is required for successful healing. This is, for example, the case if the splint consists of a wire rack.